Former ballerina won't let diabetes end dance career

Saturday

Dec 28, 2013 at 12:01 AMDec 28, 2013 at 12:56 PM

T?he last night she made an appearance as a professional ballerina, Katelyn Prominski danced Swan Lake with a staph infection. A corn on her right foot had become infected, and six months of antibiotics hadn't helped. She had been rehearsing in socks. To perform, she put on a larger ballet shoe from a friend and went onstage at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia while her foot bled through the shoe.

T?he last night she made an appearance as a professional ballerina, Katelyn Prominski danced Swan Lake with a staph infection.

A corn on her right foot had become infected, and six months of antibiotics hadn’t helped.

She had been rehearsing in socks.

To perform, she put on a larger ballet shoe from a friend and went onstage at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia while her foot bled through the shoe.

“It was a terrible experience,” she said. “I was like ‘I’m done with ballet — done, done, done.’”

That’s what she thought, anyway, 2 1/2 years ago.

But, on Christmas, the Washington, D.C., native returned to the Kennedy Center to dance on a stage she knows well. She returned home as the “lead ballerina” in the musical Flashdance, scheduled for a four-week run.

If that seems a step down in her career, it isn’t — not to a young woman who doubted that a shocking diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes would let her perform again.

After that painful Swan Lake in March 2011, Prominski left the Pennsylvania Ballet and moved back to her mother’s house in Arlington County, Va., to recover from foot surgery. She was constantly thirsty, so her mom positioned a cooler next to the couch. The recovery was slow, but when she was able, Prominski joined her boyfriend, former Pennsylvania Ballet dancer Max Baud, on the national tour of the musical Billy Elliot.

He played the adult Billy, while Prominski worked as a guardian for one of the young actors and taught a ballet class to girls in the show. Her goal was to be well enough to perform with the Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Kennedy Center that October. Since 2002, whenever the Pennsylvania Ballet and her previous company, the Boston Ballet, would let her, Prominski had returned to Washington to dance with Farrell’s company.

“I decided to semi-retire and just dance with Suzanne,” Prominski said. “But it didn’t work. Everything came tumbling down.”

In rehearsals, Farrell — who had known Prominski for about 10 years — said to her, “You’re not the same dancer anymore, and you have got to find out what’s wrong.”

That December, Billy Elliot came to the Kennedy Center, and Prominski started scheduling medical appointments, including a visit to an endocrinologist at Virginia Hospital Center. After a round of tests came a conversation that, she said, went something like this:

Doctor: “So you are here for your diabetes?”

Prominski: “No, my thyroid.”

Doctor: “I think you have diabetes.”

Prominski, incredulous: “What do you mean you think I have diabetes? How do you know?”

Doctor: “If your blood sugar level is over 120 milligrams per deciliter, you have it.”

Prominski: “What’s my blood sugar?”

Doctor: “700.”

At that count, many diabetics have impaired mental functions. But, as a dancer, Prominski’s fitness level, healthful habits and stubborn streak had enabled her to ignore diabetes symptoms for three years.

“Dancers are stoic, and they tend to push through pain,” said Linda Hamilton, a psychologist who serves on New York City Ballet’s wellness team.

“Having Type 1 diabetes is a challenge for anyone, but dancers are used to trying to control your body. It’s your instrument. And yet it’s very difficult to control your blood-sugar levels,” Hamilton said.

Back on the Billy Elliot tour, Prominski spent several months learning how to give herself insulin injections and regulate her diet. In May 2012, she moved to New York — Baud would later join her — and started thinking about the next step in her career.

“As I started getting better and getting my blood sugar under control, I realized that I needed to start performing again,” Prominski said. “The disease is what had taken all the joy out of it for me. But I didn’t want to go back to ballet. I just thought it would be too hard to manage my (blood glucose) numbers.”

Hamilton knows another high-profile ballerina who came back after a diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes: former City Ballet soloist Zippora Karz, who went on to dance with the company for 13 years. But Karz was 21 when she got the news. Prominski was 28. In the ballet world, seven years can be an entire career.

Prominski started taking voice lessons and working as a stock photo model. She became a personal trainer at Ballet Beautiful, a studio that caters to actors, fashion editors and Victoria’s Secret models. By teaching four classes a day, she got herself back into shape and auditioned for roles as a dancer in musical theater.

There were challenges. She isn’t the greatest tapper in the world, and, in hip-hop classes, teachers have yelled “Hey, you! Ballerina!” before they even see her dance.

But, earlier this year, Prominski got the call she had awaited: A producer offered her a role in the national tour of Flashdance, a new musical based on the 1983 film.

As “lead ballerina,” her characters include a dream version of Alex, the steelworker who moonlights as a club dancer; a star student at an elite Pittsburgh dance academy; and a professional dancer who performs excerpts from The Firebird. Prominski appeared earlier this month in the Columbus visit of the musical.

The Flashdance team is aware that she is diabetic, so stage managers carry candy in their pockets so that, if Prominski runs off and feels her blood sugar crashing, she can grab some.

Flashdance might not be the type of show to which balletomanes flock, but Prominski calls its message an important one.

“Through dance,” she said, “you can overcome obstacles.”

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